When do you cross the line from having a passing interest in the weird, to obsessive conspiracy theorist?

I’m beginning to worry about my obsession with conspiracies. I keep stumbling on websites about chemtrails and I’m starting to think I could quite easily become sympathetic to the chemtrail theorists’ cause.

What’s that I hear you say? You don’t know what chemtrails are? Well let me explain: chemtrails are those vapour trails left by aeroplanes in the sky, only they’re not harmless vapour trails, they are in fact chemtrails – chemical or biological agents being deliberately sprayed into the atmosphere by governments through superficially benign aircraft.

Some of the conspiracy nuts reckon this is being done to control the world’s climate, others say it’s to control our minds. And some of the more wild conspiracy websites speculate that we are being protected from the chemtrails by atmosphere-inhabiting sylphs – angel-like creatures from outer space who are doing daily battle in our skies with the evil chemtrails.

The thing is, even when I’m watching a YouTube video from the Met Office forecasting heavy rain for the weekend, there’s a link to a documentary on chemtrails and people proving they are a tool by government to control our lives. Or something (I soon got bored).

And there’s me thinking we should be worrying about air travel because of the sheer damage it’s doing to our planet’s fragile environment.

Conspiracy theorists and their postulations are laughably weird, in a slightly worrying way. Like those people who’ve stocked up on emergency supplies so they are prepared for all eventualities which promise to cause the end of humanity – from the downfall of capitalism to solar electromagnetic pulses blowing out all technology to a collapse in our energy supply.

All these things mean humanity is forever teetering on the brink of destruction, or at least we can endlessly speculate on its possible end.

Because the people with the just-in-case generators in their garages are never happy unless they think we are facing mass annihilation being caused by lizard men who secretly control the universe.

If they’re not testing their generators, or looking for more terrifying things on the internet, they’re making videos on YouTube tto back up their ludicrous, yet annoyingly engrossing theories.

Here’s me thinking the world was run by people like you and me, fallible to the same human mistakes we all make through our lives and that we’re all part of the same, flawed system. In truth, we’re being controlled by a small group of lizard beings intent on destroying what freedoms we have left.

* Disclaimer: I do not believe in lizard people or anything by conspiracy theorists on the internet.